Landscape architect Seth Rodewald-Bates and his wife, Elisabeth Davies recently designed and built their home using recycled shipping containers. The home is located in the Carrollton neighborhood of New Orleans. They used two 4-ton repurposed shipping containers, which they purchased from Boasso America and collected from the New Orleans Terminal in Chalmette.

Downsizing, minimizing and simplifying is starting to appeal to more and more people and with good reason. Sustainability starts at home, so to speak, and living in a tiny home is certainly a great way to achieve it. And as today’s tiny house example proves, the sacrifice does not need to be all that great. It was constructed by, a former Christian missionary Chris Heininge and it is located in Aurora, Oregon. The design is inspired by the Japanese homes in which he spent time in doing his work.

Building better and more sustainable batteries is certainly one of the goals for the future. And now, those packing peanuts used to protect fragile things from breaking during transport could play a major role in achieving this goal. A team of researchers at Perdue University has discovered that these packing peanuts could actually be used in lithium-ion batteries.

Entrepreneur Roy Solomon is currently busy overseeing the building of a unique center in Albuquerque NM, which will be build entirely out of shipping containers. The center will be located at a busy location near I-40 and Carlisle Boulevard. It is called Green Jeans and it will house shops, offices and restaurants.

The Australian architecture firm Archiblox recently unveiled their newest prefab home, which boasts of a number of sustainable and green features. According to the architects this is the first carbon positive prefabricated house in the world, which also means that it is the first energy positive prefab home. Whether those claims are true is up for debate, perhaps, but the fact that this is a very sustainable prefab home can’t be denied.

The only thing better than downsizing in a tiny home is doing so on a tiny budget. Scott Brooks spent less then $500 to built his dream tiny home, called Transforming Tiny Home, which was largely made possible by using repurposed and salvaged materials.